is, "what varieties do I plant?" The
second is, "Where do I buy them?" I am very sorry to say I can answer
neither one of those questions at the present time satisfactorily to
myself, nor to the people of the State of Michigan, and I feel that we
do need action, and we need it quick in order that we can select a
certain number of varieties that we can conscientiously recommend to the
grower, and also a very few varieties to recommend to the nurserymen of
the state so that they will propagate them and make them available to
prospective customers.
MR. SLATE: I want to support Mr. Anthony's remarks that there are too
many old men testing nut tree varieties.
DR. ANTHONY: Not too many, no.
MR. SLATE: And there are too many squirrels involved. If a man gets the
idea that he is going to take up the nuts, by the time he accumulates a
collection of nuts, when these come into bearing the squirrels get most
of the nuts, and they don't seem to be very much concerned about
evaluation. Then the man dies and the collection goes to pot. There must
be some continuity, and as far as I can see, that will have to come
through state experiment stations.
Now, just how you are going to get the experiment stations started in
testing nut tree varieties, I don't really know. Many of the projects at
the experiment stations are there because they are catering to the
larger industries in the state, and sometimes the projects are there
because somebody in an administrative position has an idea which he
wishes to see developed.
Now, I would like to comment on the remark of our forester friend here,
and I think he won't take offense at what I am going to say. It seems to
me that the foresters are not in a good position to criticize the
horticulturists. The forester's knowledge of variety improvement for a
long, long time has been based upon the problem of lots of seed from
certain geographical areas, and I feel sure that foresters as a class
have only very, very recently become aware of the importance of the
clone as we use it in horticulture.
Now, horticulturists, that is, pomologists, nut culturists, people who
deal with ornamentals, have been keenly aware of the horticultural clone
for a long, long time. There have been brought improvements into our
cultivated plants through the hybridization of clones that all of the
horticulturists are familiar with. The blueberry work done by the
Department of Agriculture is probably the most striki
|